OGDEN — The Ogden administration’s pending plan to strengthen design standards for apartment developments has raised some concern about how the measure could impact affordable housing.

The Ogden City Council is mulling a potential ordinance that would introduce improved design standards and other regulations to help promote higher quality multi-family projects in commercial zones throughout the city. The potential statute is detailed and lengthy, but generally calls for more stringent design standards and includes a number of new requirements regarding open space, parking and building materials.

Ogden City Planning Manager Greg Montgomery said the city administration is not only concerned with the quality of some of the apartment proposals coming before them, but also the sheer number of them. According to city Planning Commission documents, there have been more than 1,500 apartment units considered by the city planning staff just since 2019. Though not all of those units have been approved for final build, the number represents a significant increase from just two years ago in 2018, when only 122 new apartment units were approved by the city.

The city says commercial zones have the greatest land value and those land values are the sole determinant of property tax. According to city planning documents, property taxes make up 26% of the city’s general fund operating budget. The city’s other main funding stream, sales tax, also accounts for 26% of the general fund income and the tax is largely driven by commercial areas. So there’s some concern from the city about an overabundance of apartment buildings in commercial zones and the impact that could have on sales tax revenues.

But while the city pores over those angles, the issue of unintended consequences on Ogden’s overall housing stock has come to light.

Angel Castillo, a former planning commissioner and 2019 candidate for mayor, said she “wholeheartedly” supports improving standards for multi-family apartments, but said code updates should carefully consider potential long-term ramifications.

“The housing affordability issues we face … are only going to get worse,” Castillo said.

Referencing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Castillo said the average cost of a single-family home in Ogden in 2017 was $208,140. By July of this year, that figure had risen to $284,194, an increase of 37%.

“And it’s not slowing down anytime soon,” Castillo said. “The days of a single-family home in Ogden for $150,000 are long gone … we simply don’t have a surplus … let alone ones affordable to our average median income of just under $50,000.”

Castillo said she doesn’t believe in a free-for-all of unlimited apartments in commercial zones, but rather would look at things like instituting minimum height and density thresholds for apartment developments, limiting them to areas near accessible transit and requiring renewable energy components.

In a letter to the City Council, Ogden-area developer Bill Knowlton said the city’s proposal could negatively impact the availability of multi-family housing for teachers, firefighters, police officers and the elderly because, from his perspective, the proposed changes would severely limit the ability to build in commercial zones. He said certain elements of the ordinance — like a requirement for brick and stone building materials, for example — will increase costs and limit creativity.

Council members Angela Choberka and Luis Lopez said they’ve heard similar things and are mindful of the housing affordability argument too.

Tom Christopulous, Ogden’s director of community and economic development, said calling for increased standards in city commercial zones won’t necessarily lead to housing affordability issues and there are still other areas of the city where apartment building can take place.

“It’s not necessarily mutually exclusive that design standards lead to higher prices,” he said. “We have to be really careful with that assumption.”

City officials have also long discussed Ogden’s disproportionate number of apartments and affordable housing, compared to the rest of Weber County.

According to the Utah League of Cities and Towns, Ogden has about 30,000 total housing units, with 45% of those being rentals. Ogden provides 58% of all of Weber County’s rental properties, according to the league. Conversely, Provo and Orem, combined, account for about the same percentage for all of Utah County. Salt Lake City provides 33% of the total rental properties in Salt Lake County.

Montgomery said the city planning staff has spent countless hours drafting the ordinance, considering all factors, and thinks the council should adopt it.

“We’ve done the research, we’ve done all the analysis, we feel comfortable with it,” he said. “Now, will it fit every single project that may come? Probably not … but do we continue on … with low- or no-standard projects and have more and more spaces developed to that? Our answer is no. We feel this is the time to make those changes. We’re talking about creating that form that everyone has a place they can feel safe in and that’s livable no matter what their economic level and where they can say, ‘This is a nice place to live.'”

Ogden Council Deputy Director Glenn Syme said the council is scheduled to vote on the ordinance on Oct. 6, but it could be continued into the following week’s council meeting.